Alabama Defensive Coordinator Kirby Smart talks to Alabama linebacker Denzel Devall during the first practice session for new and younger players for the 2012 season in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Friday, Aug. 3, 2012. (The Birmingham News/ Mark Almond)

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama
-- Robert Lester has been around Alabama long enough to know what it
takes to pass Nick Saban's off-season conditioning test.

The
fifth-year senior safety said he didn't notice anything different about
this particular summer, but that's only because he was so locked in to
meeting the standards set for his version of the test. But even he
wasn't immune to the positive buzz that consumed the Crimson Tide after
one of his teammates went slightly above and beyond the required
parameters.

After
the Crimson Tide's first official practice of the fall, Lester wasn't
the only Alabama player raving about the team's productive time between
the end of spring football and Friday. Saban was, too, as he praised the
players for some of the best results, "in terms of quality
performance," he's ever seen during his six years at Alabama.

It
was yet another moment of encouragement for Saban, whose offseason
message has centered on the dangerous reality of how the kind of success
Alabama saw in 2011 can lead to various sorts of complacency.

Exhibit A: The 2010 Crimson Tide.

"That
doesn't necessarily mean you're a better football player," Saban said.
"It just means the players invested a lot in the conditioning work that
they have, and that's going to give them a better opportunity to sustain
some practices and some things that they need to do to try to
improve."

That
was certainly easier for the first group that took to the revamped
Thomas-Drew practice fields Friday. The majority of Alabama's veterans
practiced together during the morning while the team's freshmen, even
the six who enrolled during the spring, worked under the lights with a
handful of underclassmen.

With
four weeks remaining until the Sept. 1 season opener against No. 8
Michigan, the entire team will come together today for its first full
practice.

"They'll
get a real fair dose of things they need to know to develop as players,
and they'll have to be able to integrate their way into the rest of the
team," Saban said. "We'll actually organize our practice so that they
get an equal amount of reps so that we can make some evaluations as to
whether some of these young guys can have a role on our team."

Now
one of the team's key defensive veterans, linebacker C.J. Mosley was in
these freshmen's shoes just two years ago. He flashed a smile when he
reflected on how out of sorts he was during the first week of camp.

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"They'd
tell me to slow down," Mosley said. "I wanted to be out there and be
fast, but you have to learn the right things to do, how to keep your
body right when you're in camp."

As
much talent as there is from this top-rated 2012 class and as much as
summer conditioning now prepares players for the grind of college
football, there's little, linebacker Nico Johnson said, that can replicate the whirlwind
transition from high school practice to practice at a place like
Alabama.

"The speed is different, the tempo is different, different coaching
staff, so everything is different," Johnson said. "But it's still football. We try our best to
make our young guys feel at home, try to make them feel as comfortable as we
can. They take it and run with it."

Passing
Saban's test -- which Lester said included various conditioning drills,
a 40-yard dash and bench press -- was a promising start. How Alabama
handles the next four weeks, on top of how it handles the expectations
that hover above the defending national champions, will have a much more
significant effect.

"It
feels good to actually stop talking about what we're going to do and
actually go out there and start putting it together," Lester said.

"This
team's going to work just as hard as (the 2011 team). The competitive
spirit is there. We've just got to see what we 're going to bring to
the tables here."